Hammer Down

No Dirt Naps For This One. It's Meant To Go Further, But Just How Much?
 

- Sherman Nazareth

Have you ever felt the pressing need to sing along with the car’s radio even though you know you’ve got a rubbish voice? In the event there are other passengers, you try to sync your voice with the tone of the song so that the harmony of notes drowns out how terrible you actually sound. Well before you bring out a bag of cats to compete with, consider the plight of the average adventure tourer owner. They’ve just bought an SUV of a motorcycle to cope with the delights of mid-life crisis and now they want to emulate all the advertisements they’ve seen with riders kicking up massive rooster trails and basically making these adventure tourers look like perfectly manageable toys. The fact is, they’re not. There’s also the actuality of those riders from the advertisements being highly trained professionals that have basically grown up in the dirt.

In India, this is a relatively new culture that tugs deeply at the wanderlust concept. After all, most of these adventure tourer owners live within the confines of concrete jungles. So the urge to get out and break free is something that is inevitable. Adventure tourers are the new cruisers. They’re large, intimidating and would make anyone riding them look like a proper space cadet. The advantage ADV bikes have over cruisers is the ability to explore terrain that doesn’t just involve tarmac. But the problem with said large adventure tourers is simply the fact that we’re all a little afraid of the consequences of dropping one of these behemoths, which is unavoidable if you’re playing in the dirt. And also the fact that these bikes weigh almost as much as a house.